her to merrily twirl her fist in the snoozer. The snoozer’s mother
wondered if they had shut the dining-room door. Soon the noise of the
fowls scattering the crockery told her they had not.
“Thum busted fowls is eatin’ orl yer dinner,” said Jinny dreamily.
“’Unt ’em out an’ shet ther door,” said sympathetic Jyne.
“You go, Sis, I’m tired.” Jinny laid her giddy head on the floor, and
went to sleep.
“Liz,” said Jyne, maliciously, for she immediately grudged Sis’
efforts to chase the fowls out of the dining-room. “Wot’s thet there
flower?” pointing to the vase.
“Wile huniyon,” said Liz, promptly.
“Er, is it? Thet’s orl yer know. Thet’s a bulbers, thet is. Thet’s
ther noo name fer it.” She looked at the grazier’s wife and laughed
ironically.
“Bulbers! yer goat,” said Liz, laughing dutifully.
The sermon was over, and the worried minister began the christening.
The naming of the hostess’ baby was plain sailing. He then drew
towards him a child of about two years, and asked, “What is this
child’s name?”
“Adrarian,” said Liz. An old shepherd reading to her a love story had
so pronounced the hero’s name. It staggered the minister, until his
hostess spelt “Adrian.”
“What is its age?”
“About two year.”
This was too vague for him, and he pressed for dates. But for these
dwellers in the bush the calendar had no significance. The mother
thought it might be in November. “Cos it wus shearin’, an’ I’d ter
keep Teddy at ’ome ter do ther work.” Teddy was “about ten.” From
these uncertainties the clergyman had to supply the dates for his
official returns to the Government.
“But Lawd,” as Jyne remarked to ease his perplexity, “wot did it
matter fer a brat of er boy.” She had a family of six, and all were
girls.
There was much the same difficulty with all the others, an exception
being Tilly Lumber’s baby of under a fortnight. A cowardly look came
into the minister’s eyes as he turned to this grotesque atom already
in the short coat stage. He remembered Jyne’s awful discovery of a
little while back, and shirked the duty of holding it even for a
moment.
The christening was a matter that had some personal interest for
the elders, and they grouped round the minister. Bridegroom Tommy,
striking the mossy back of Alick’s old father, suggested that he and
Jyne’s mother should get spliced, and he expressed the opinion of the
fruitfulness of such union within record time as a set-off dig at
Jyne.
She instantly balanced matters between herself and the incautiously
smiling Liz and the laughing unfilial Ned, “Stop scratchin’ yer
’ed, miss; anyone ’ud think there wus anythink in it,” she said to
Liz’s eldest girl, who was brushing the christening water from her
hair. Ned’s stepson she invited to come nearer, and tell her who had
blackened his poor eye. She advised the silent lad “ter get a waddy
ther nex’ time anyone bigger’n yer goes ter ’it yer.” And she gave
him directions by twirling an imaginary waddy swiftly, its circuit
suddenly diverting in a line with Ned’s skull.
It was long past noon when the ceremony was ended. The minister
drained his glass of water, mopped his face, and heaved a deep sigh.
As the whole congregation still sat on, he gave them a hint that
“church” was out, and their presence no longer required. He spoke
with a show of concern of how very hot they would find the walk home,
and to further emphasise his meaning, he shook hands with all the
adults, and walked to the verandah. Without the slightest concern
they sat on, listening intently to the sounds the hostess made in
trying to scrape together a meal for the clergyman. Apparently they
all meant to stay the day.
The grazier’s wife appeared for a moment to beckon him to go round
the house into the dining-room. He sat down to the remains of the
dinner the children had left.
At that moment Jinny, who had been awakened for the christening,
looked round the door. “Our Sis wants ter know w’en’s ’er supper’s
goin’ ter be!” she said.
This perhaps was an acknowledgment that Sis had already dined.
THE CHOSEN VESSEL.
She laid the stick and her baby on the grass while she untied the
rope that tethered the calf. The length of the rope separated them.
The cow was near the calf, and both were lying down. Feed along the
creek was plentiful, and every day she found a fresh place to tether
it, since tether it she must, for if she did not, it would stray
with the cow out on the plain. She had plenty of time to go after
it, but then there was baby; and if the cow turned on her out on the
plain, and she with baby,--she had been a town girl and was afraid
of the cow, but she did not want the cow to know it. She used to run
at first when it bellowed its protest against the penning up of its
calf. This satisfied the cow, also the calf, but the woman’s husband
was angry, and called her--the noun was cur. It was he who forced her
to run and meet the advancing cow, brandishing a stick, and uttering
threatening words till the enemy turned and ran. “That’s the way!”
the man said, laughing at her white face. In many things he was worse
than the cow, and she wondered if the same rule would apply to the
man, but she was not one to provoke skirmishes even with the cow.
It was early for the calf to go “to bed”--nearly an hour earlier than
usual; but she had felt so restless all day. Partly because it was
Monday, and the end of the week that would bring her and baby the
companionship of its father, was so far off. He was a shearer, and
had gone to his shed before daylight that morning. Fifteen miles as
the crow flies separated them.
There was a track in front of the house, for it had once been a wine
shanty, and a few travellers passed along at intervals. She was not
afraid of horsemen; but swagmen, going to, or worse, coming from the
dismal, drunken little township, a day’s journey beyond, terrified
her. One had called at the house to-day, and asked for tucker.
Ah! that was why she had penned up the calf so early! She feared more
from the look of his eyes, and the gleam of his teeth, as he watched
her newly awakened baby beat its impatient fists upon her covered
breasts, than from the knife that was sheathed in the belt at his
waist.
She had given him bread and meat. Her husband she told him was sick.
She always said that when she was alone, and a swagman came, and she
had gone in from the kitchen to the bedroom, and asked questions
and replied to them in the best man’s voice she could assume. Then
he had asked to go into the kitchen to boil his billy, but she gave
him tea, and he drank it on the wood heap. He had walked round and
round the house, and there were cracks in some places, and after the
last time he had asked for tobacco. She had none to give him, and he
had grinned, because there was a broken clay pipe near the wood heap
where he stood, and if there were a man inside, there ought to have
been tobacco. Then he asked for money, but women in the bush never
have money.
At last he had gone, and she, watching through the cracks, saw him
when about a quarter of a mile away, turn and look back at the
house. He had stood so for some moments with a pretence of fixing his
swag, and then, apparently satisfied, moved to the left towards the
creek. The creek made a bow round the house, and when he came to it
she lost sight of him. Hours after, watching intently for signs of
smoke, she saw the man’s dog chasing some sheep that had gone to the
creek for water, and saw it slink back suddenly, as if the man had
called it.
More than once she thought of taking her baby and going to her
husband. But in the past, when she had dared to speak of the dangers
to which her loneliness exposed her, he had taunted and sneered at
her. She need not flatter herself, he had coarsely told her, that any
body would want to run away with her.
Long before nightfall she placed food on the kitchen table, and
beside it laid the big brooch that had been her mother’s. It was the
only thing of value that she had. And she left the kitchen door wide
open.
The doors inside she securely fastened. Beside the bolt in the back
one she drove in the steel and scissors; against it she piled the
table and the stools. Underneath the lock of the front door she
forced the handle of the spade, and the blade between the cracks in
the flooring boards. Then the prop-stick, cut into lengths, held the
top, as the spade held the middle. The windows were little more than
portholes; she had nothing to fear through them.
She ate a few mouthfuls of food and drank a cup of milk. But she
lighted no fire, and when night came, no candle, but crept with her
baby to bed.
What woke her? The wonder was that she had slept--she had not meant
to. But she was young, very young. Perhaps the shrinking of the
galvanized roof--yet hardly, since that was so usual. Something had
set her heart beating wildly; but she lay quite still, only she put
her arm over her baby. Then she had both round it, and she prayed,
“Little baby, little baby, don’t wake!”
The moon’s rays shone on the front of the house, and she saw one
of the open cracks, quite close to where she lay, darken with a
shadow. Then a protesting growl reached her; and she could fancy she
heard the man turn hastily. She plainly heard the thud of something
striking the dog’s ribs, and the long flying strides of the animal
as it howled and ran. Still watching, she saw the shadow darken
every crack along the wall. She knew by the sounds that the man was
trying every standpoint that might help him to see in; but how much
he saw she could not tell. She thought of many things she might do to
deceive him into the idea that she was not alone. But the sound of
her voice would wake baby, and she dreaded that as though it were the
only danger that threatened her. So she prayed, “Little baby, don’t
wake, don’t cry!”
Stealthily the man crept about. She knew he had his boots off,
because of the vibration that his feet caused as he walked along the
verandah to gauge the width of the little window in her room, and the
resistance of the front door.
Then he went to the other end, and the uncertainty of what he was
doing became unendurable. She had felt safer, far safer, while he
was close, and she could watch and listen. She felt she must watch,
but the great fear of wakening baby again assailed her. She suddenly
recalled that one of the slabs on that side of the house had shrunk
in length as well as in width, and had once fallen out. It was held
in position only by a wedge of wood underneath. What if he should
discover that! The uncertainty increased her terror. She prayed as
she gently raised herself with her little one in her arms, held
tightly to her breast.
She thought of the knife, and shielded her child’s body with her
hands and arms. Even its little feet she covered with its white
gown, and baby never murmured--it liked to be held so. Noiselessly
she crossed to the other side, and stood where she could see and
hear, but not be seen. He was trying every slab, and was very near
to that with the wedge under it. Then she saw him find it; and heard
the sound of the knife as bit by bit he began to cut away the wooden
support.
She waited motionless, with her baby pressed tightly to her, though
she knew that in another few minutes this man with the cruel eyes,
lascivious mouth, and gleaming knife, would enter. One side of the
slab tilted; he had only to cut away the remaining little end, when
the slab, unless he held it, would fall outside.
She heard his jerked breathing as it kept time with the cuts of the
knife, and the brush of his clothes as he rubbed the wall in his
movements, for she was so still and quiet, that she did not even
tremble. She knew when he ceased, and wondered why. She stood well
concealed; she knew he could not see her, and that he would not
fear if he did, yet she heard him move cautiously away. Perhaps he
expected the slab to fall. Still his motive puzzled her, and she
moved even closer, and bent her body the better to listen. Ah! what
sound was that? “Listen! Listen!” she bade her heart--her heart that
had kept so still, but now bounded with tumultuous throbs that dulled
her ears. Nearer and nearer came the sounds, till the welcome thud of
a horse’s hoof rang out clearly.
“Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” she cried for they were very close
before she could make sure. She turned to the door, and with her baby
in her arms tore frantically at its bolts and bars.
Out she darted at last, and running madly along, saw the horseman
beyond her in the distance. She called to him in Christ’s name, in
her babe’s name, still flying like the wind with the speed that
deadly peril gives. But the distance grew greater and greater between
them, and when she reached the creek her prayers turned to wild
shrieks, for there crouched the man she feared, with outstretched
arms that caught her as she fell. She knew he was offering terms if
she ceased to struggle and cry for help, though louder and louder
did she cry for it, but it was only when the man’s hand gripped
her throat, that the cry of “Murder” came from her lips. And when
she ceased, the startled curlews took up the awful sound, and flew
shrieking over the horseman’s head.
* * * * *
“By God!” said the boundary rider, “its been a dingo right enough!
Eight killed up here, and there’s more down in the creek--a ewe and a
lamb, I’ll bet; and the lamb’s alive!” And he shut out the sky with
his hand, and watched the crows that were circling round and round,
nearing the earth one moment, and the next shooting skywards. By
that he knew the lamb must be alive; even a dingo will spare a lamb
sometimes.
Yes, the lamb was alive, and after the manner of lambs of its kind
did not know its mother when the light came. It had sucked the still
warm breasts, and laid its little head on her bosom, and slept till
the morn. Then, when it looked at the swollen disfigured face, it
wept and would have crept away, but for the hand that still clutched
its little gown. Sleep was nodding its golden head and swaying its
small body, and the crows were close, so close, to the mother’s
wide-open eyes, when the boundary rider galloped down.
“Jesus Christ!” he said, covering his eyes. He told afterwards how
the little child held out its arms to him, and how he was forced to
cut its gown that the dead hand held.
* * * * *
It was election time, and as usual the priest had selected a
candidate. His choice was so obviously in the interests of the
squatter, that Peter Hennessey’s reason, for once in his life, had
over-ridden superstition, and he had dared promise his vote to
another. Yet he was uneasy, and every time he woke in the night (and
it was often), he heard the murmur of his mother’s voice. It came
through the partition, or under the door. If through the partition,
he knew she was praying in her bed; but when the sounds came under
the door, she was on her knees before the little altar in the corner
that enshrined the statue of the Blessed Virgin and Child.
“Mary, Mother of Christ! save my son! Save him!” prayed she in the
dairy as she strained and set the evening’s milking. “Sweet Mary! for
the love of Christ, save him!” The grief in her old face made the
morning meal so bitter, that to avoid her he came late to his dinner.
It made him so cowardly, that he could not say good-bye to her, and
when night fell on the eve of the election day, he rode off secretly.
He had thirty miles to ride to the township to record his vote. He
cantered briskly along the great stretch of plain that had nothing
but stunted cotton bush to play shadow to the full moon, which
glorified a sky of earliest spring. The bruised incense of the
flowering clover rose up to him, and the glory of the night appealed
vaguely to his imagination, but he was preoccupied with his present
act of revolt.
Vividly he saw his mother’s agony when she would find him gone. At
that moment, he felt sure, she was praying.
“Mary! Mother of Christ!” He repeated the invocation, half
unconsciously. And suddenly, out of the stillness, came Christ’s name
to him--called loudly in despairing accents.
“For Christ’s sake! Christ’s sake! Christ’s sake!” called the voice.
Good Catholic that he had been, he crossed himself before he dared
to look back. Gliding across a ghostly patch of pipe-clay, he saw a
white-robed figure with a babe clasped to her bosom.
All the superstitious awe of his race and religion swayed his brain.
The moonlight on the gleaming clay was a “heavenly light” to him, and
he knew the white figure not for flesh and blood, but for the Virgin
and Child of his mother’s prayers. Then, good Catholic that once more
he was, he put spurs to his horse’s sides and galloped madly away.
His mother’s prayers were answered.
Hennessey was the first to record his vote--for the priest’s
candidate. Then he sought the priest at home, but found that he was
out rallying the voters. Still, under the influence of his blessed
vision, Hennessey would not go near the public houses, but wandered
about the outskirts of the town for hours, keeping apart from the
towns-people, and fasting as penance. He was subdued and mildly
ecstatic, feeling as a repentant chastened child, who awaits only the
kiss of peace.
And at last, as he stood in the graveyard crossing himself with
reverent awe, he heard in the gathering twilight the roar of many
voices crying the name of the victor at the election. It was well
with the priest.
Again Hennessey sought him. He was at home, the house-keeper said,
and led him into the dimly-lighted study. His seat was immediately
opposite a large picture, and as the housekeeper turned up the lamp,
once more the face of the Madonna and Child looked down on him, but
this time silently, peacefully. The half-parted lips of the Virgin
were smiling with compassionate tenderness; her eyes seemed to beam
with the forgiveness of an earthly mother for her erring but beloved
child.
He fell on his knees in adoration. Transfixed, the wondering priest
stood, for mingled with the adoration, “My Lord and my God!” was the
exaltation, “And hast Thou chosen me?”
“What is it, Peter?” said the priest.
“Father,” he answered reverently, and with loosened tongue he poured
forth the story of his vision.
“Great God!” shouted the priest, “and you did not stop to save her!
Have you not heard?”
* * * * *
Many miles further down the creek a man kept throwing an old cap into
a water-hole. The dog would bring it out and lay it on the opposite
side to where the man stood, but would not allow the man to catch
him, though it was only to wash the blood of the sheep from his mouth
and throat, for the sight of blood made the man tremble.
Transcriber’s Note:
Words in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_.
Underlined text is surrounded by tildes, ~like this~. Words may have
multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text.
These have been left unchanged, as were jargon, dialect, obsolete and
alternative spellings. Final stops missing at the end of sentences
were added. Duplicate words at line endings were removed. Punctuation
was standardized. Four misspelled words were corrected. Unprinted
letters were added to three words:
‘... who from time to t[ime] continued to take ...’
‘... She [fea]red more from the look of his eyes,...’
‘... and [l]ooked under the mat ...’